


Fenris (Remade)

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Trans Character, Trans Fenris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3463910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris, though, he has no idea what he wants. Or, he knows what he wants but not in such precise terms. He doesn’t know how to get there, can only dream of already having it. Merely wanting a thing doesn’t make it so, and some fights are impossible to find the start of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fenris (Remade)

He wakes up tired like he drank too much, leaves the sheets all crumpled behind and sinks into yesterday’s bathwater. He doesn’t look at himself. That is important. He does not look at himself. The mirror is all cracked over anyway, mould growing in one corner. He never knew that glass could grow mould.

There’s a black mark turning purple and yellow and green as it fans out over his ribs, and even if he doesn’t touch it he can’t breathe without hurting. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He presses his fingers into that hollow beneath the last of his ribs and feels heady from the lack of air, like someone is pressing on his neck but the pain is happening where he needs it, deep inside of himself.

After that, he washes himself as quickly as he can, trying not to think about it. Ignoring his body is always more difficult when it’s screaming with pain, keeping him grounded, within. There is blood new on his skin from his restless sleep which take his nails digging into it before it flakes off into the water.

There’s a spider in the corner looking horrid, and Fenris eyes it as he sits down to piss, dripping wet. He has a towel, somewhere, but if he could find it he knows it would smell worse than the water he just left.

Instead he sits, naked and drying, beating the breastplate back into shape. Soon he’ll need a new one, but he is loathe to change. Always loathe for anything to alter, except what matters most, and that is a stretch beyond anything he can reach. There’s money in the chest beside his bed, but he hasn’t counted it. Isn’t sure where to take it, isn’t sure how much is enough.

He keeps beating at the breastplate, and does not think of such things.

He needs to tip out the bathwater but cannot gather the energy. It’s gone brown from blood and dirt, but if he stands the world will spin. It is easier to not.

Hawke arrives only when he is dry enough that he can consider putting on clothes. There’s his undershirt, tight against him. He tells himself, sometimes, sometimes, that it’s more to keep cracked ribs from shifting into something worse than for anything else. A lie, but most of what Fenris has are lies. He puts a looser shirt over the top, his tight leggings stained into brown, and then begins buckling up his armour.

Hawke takes her time walking through the house, like she always does, like it’s so fascinating to see the mushrooms turning the carpet into dirt and the paintings that Sebastian uses for target practice.

Fenris feels like two people, and when Hawke shows up he’s steady and calm, the sort of person to practically heat water over the fire before taking a bath, the sort of person who sleeps well and easily. He knows that Hawke doesn’t quite believe but also knows Hawke doesn’t know how to ask.

Sometimes she tells him she’s happy to listen, but she’s not. He’s tried; it doesn’t turn out how he needs.

There’s a fight. The carta, or some smugglers, or just someone that Anders or Isabela or Merrill pissed off. Fenris doesn’t listen long enough to find out. He falls in between Hawke and her dog. The world spins, and it passes, but he pauses in the market long enough to buy something to eat. He’s not smart, but he’s not that kind of stupid.

‘You alright, today?’ she asks him. He shrugs a shoulder, which hurts, and keeps on chewing. No, he’s not, but he never is, so his scale’s out of tune. Today’s a bad day, though, however he looks at it. He needs to fight something. He needs to grip someone’s throat and just squeeze until their limbs flop dead.

‘Yeah,’ he says, all casual-like, as though it doesn’t matter. He’s not completely convinced it does. She gives him a doubtful look that he doesn’t notice, and they go on down to Darktown to fight whatever she’s being paid for today.

The money he gets, he puts it into a pouch that he ties onto his belt. Hawke bumps against his arm. ‘You coming for food?’

‘Yours, or Hanged Man?’

She grins at him, a jaunty look on her scarred face. ‘Guess.’

 

 

True that he broods, true that when sits at a table with these four women he seems like a man with nothing to say, but there is little space for his words. Unless someone directs a question right to his face he feels unable to give anything. Merrill pushes against his arm and Isabela bickers with Aveline, Hawke louder than them all at the head of the table.

Isabela is on one side of him leaning across the table to do a reading of Aveline’s palm. She’s not very good at it, and Aveline is laughing because Isabela is doing little more than tickling as she slides her fingers over the lines.

‘You,’ Isabela tries to twist Aveline’s hand to look at it in the other direction, ‘are going to have twelve children.’ She frowns, and Aveline laughs. ‘You should probably start on that already.’

‘Am I going to be rich?’ asks Aveline.

‘You’ll need a lot of money,’ Isabela nods. ‘Let’s see. I can’t see. Move your thumb. Fenris, do you know what this line means?’

‘You’ll get a promotion,’ he suggests, voice dry.

‘A promotion!’ Isabela leans forward so her chest is all on the table, necklace jangling. ‘That can’t be right.’

Aveline agrees. ‘I’m already at the top.’

‘Maybe you’ll be king!’ Isabela cries.

Aveline laughs, but tries to not. ‘Kirkwall doesn’t have kings.’

‘Queen? We’ll make it a monarchy. It’ll be fun. Hawke! Put this on the list: we’re making Aveline Queen of Kirkwall.’

‘Alright, but it’ll have to wait. Hope that’s okay with you. It’s a bit of a long list.’

Aveline brushes a bit of hair from her face and takes her hand back from Isabela, corners of her eyes crinkled from smiling. ‘That’s fine, I’ve gotta have twelve kids.’

‘Maker, you better go get started on that now.’

Isabela makes a flapping motion with her hands. ‘Go on, be off with you.’

‘Donnic’s on duty tonight,’ Aveline returns.

‘The lines don’t say who the father has to be,’ Isabela teases right on back.

Varric arrives late and wiping blood from his cheek, splattered there like he wasn’t the one doing the killing. Sebastian is behind him, both of them jovial.

‘A good day?’ asks Hawke.

Varric looks at Sebastian, who laughs, sharing some inside joke. ‘Fucking awesome,’ Varric declares, sitting down heavily. He looks around, nods at Isabela, comments on the red on Merrill’s nails flaking off, asks where Anders is.

‘Haven’t seen him,’ says Isabela, nonchalant, but Hawke is marginally more concerned.

‘I’ll check on him before I go home,' she says. 

‘Maybe we’ll have to put Operation Destroy Templars into action,’ says Sebastian, which is hilarious to everyone at the table, because it is Sebastian suggesting they save Anders from the Circle. Fenris smiles, huffs a laugh that hurts his ribs, but sees his two friends smiling across the table at each other and immediately feels out of the loop, out of sorts.

‘You alright?’ Merrill asks, gently, twisting a little so that they could pretend a private conversation at this table of gossips.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Tired. I didn’t sleep well.’

‘I didn’t, either,’ she says, and he can see that in the purple rings beneath her eyes, the way her smile is not so lively as usual. ‘The Fade,’ she continues, and of course, of course the question for him is not about him, it is merely another person making an opening to discuss themselves. But he listens, because he is Merrill’s friend, and because he is concerned that her blood magic is taking an unseen toll on her. She is Hawke’s friend, too, and Hawke has lost too much to lose someone else.

He leaves when he knows it will not surprise anyone that he’s going. Weary, he walks home slowly, unable to go fast up the stairs for fear of breathing hard enough that his ribs hurt worse than they already do. The scowl on his face is enough to keep the bandits away for one night. He puts the money he earned in the same place he keeps all his money, pressing his hands to the coins and wondering how much is there. If it’s enough.

There is a book lying face-down and open on the floor beside his bed. He knows he will not sleep. He peels his armour from his fingers and takes the blanket from the bed to the window-seat.

Hawke has complimented his efforts at reading; now that he knows the letters and can generally shape out the words he does not need her or Varric beside him. Truth be told he isn’t sure he deserves such praise for his perseverance. It doesn’t feel like a stubborn refusal to give up. He merely has nothing else to fill his time.

A promotion and twelve kids for Aveline, and a ship for Isabela, and the whole city for Hawke.

He, though, he has no idea what he wants. Or, he knows what he wants but not in such precise terms. He doesn’t know how to get there, can only dream of already having it. Merely wanting a thing doesn’t make it so, and some fights are impossible to find the start of.

 

 

It is raining, but slightly, air musky with indecision. The day was long; the week was long. A trip into the mountains that lasted too long, and the weather is warm but threatening to turn cold. Fenris is still so tired and worse off for being around so many people.

He considers that maybe it would be easier if they were not all so nice, so easy to be around. But they are, and it’s so easy to fall in alongside their jokes and their pranks. He feels what it must have been like to be fifteen and not a slave, joining Isabela in carefully, carefully sewing Anders into his sleeping bag without waking him. Coming back to camp sword dripping with qunari blood and no law around to say if they were wrong or right, the wind catching the sea to fill their lungs with salt.

It’s late when they get back into the city and later still when he leaves the Hanged Man, Merrill attempting to show off her cartwheels in between Carta thugs and Darktown thieves.

He’s happy, buzzing, but tired and the night is that claustrophobic dark that has his mood dissipating only a few metres away from the loud background of the bar.

The person must be new in town; few people bother attacking Fenris outright anymore.

It’s been a long week already, and so much time around people has him forced out of his body, out of his mind, merely a ghost-being puppeting a flesh-thing along behind.

He’s in a bad way already, too out of touch with his body to manage to swing the sword easily. He’s horrified when it slips from his grasp and clatters away. There’s a group, not just one, like he thought. His body hurts from a week of fighting. His mouth tastes of nothing except the foul ale he’d been drinking less than an hour before at the bar.

Reaching for the Fade hurts, and he screams, skin boiling into blue he can see even through tight-shut eyes. He does not bother with finesse. Does not aim for body parts. He only reaches, and grabs, and pulls.

When there is nothing coming for him he sinks to his knees. He is breathing hard. He isn’t sure he’s glad for winning.

‘Are you alright?’ Thinking it’s just a passerby he shakes his head to get them gone. He doesn’t know if he can protect himself against another fight. Oh, he would, he will, he feels for the Fade again even as he wishes for nothing more than to give up. He is just so tired of needing to fight. He wishes, for once, just once, couldn’t someone give him something for free?

But it’s Aveline rushing forward, taking his hands in hers and crouching down in front of him. He cannot look at her face. There is blood on his hands and he cannot look at her face. ‘Fenris, Fenris, talk to me. Are you injured?’

‘It’s not,’ he tries to turn his hands into fists but she is holding them. ‘It’s not my blood.’

‘Okay. Alright, Fenris, I need you to relax. Sit down, here,’ she lifts him slightly, strong arms hustling him backwards so he’s not longer got his knees pressed to the rough stone. ‘Where’s your sword?’

He lifts a hand to point. ‘I’m just going to get it and bring it here.’ She pats his knee, getting a huff of a laugh from his burning throat. He dropped his own weapon. Stupid, stupid. He’s not meant to be that kind of idiot.

‘Here’s your sword,’ she says, pressing the leather-bound hilt into his hands. It’s comforting, and he lets out a breath. ‘Can you stand?’

He doesn’t think so.

‘That’s alright, we can just sit a spell. I have some food, if you like.’ She takes something out of a pouch at her belt. Only when it’s been unwrapped and pressed into his hands does he blink and focus to see a pretty handful of biscuits all delicately iced.

‘No,’ he shakes his head hard enough that his vision turns to stars. ‘This is for Donnic.’

‘I bought it as a gift. I am giving it to you.’

Failing the energy to argue he eats the biscuits. They’re too sweet, and crumble on his tongue.

‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

He closes his eyes. The words have never found his tongue, even when people have asked. He’s never believed anyone cared for listening. Not to him. Not for longer than necessary to find an opening to talk about themselves.

‘Fenris,’ Aveline says. Her voice is soft, insistent. ‘I can help.’

‘I have money,’ he begins. It’s all wrong but now that he’s started that’s where he needs to go from. ‘And I don’t know who to give it to.’ He waits to see if she’ll interrupt, but she doesn’t. She only looks at him peacefully, like all she wants to do is listen. It’s startling. ‘I need a doctor? A mage. Not Anders.’ That’s important, so he says it again. ‘Not him. I don’t know who else. If there’s anyone else,’ he adds in a mumble. ‘I want,’ he bites that off. ‘I need,’ he corrects, ‘to fix myself.’

He waits for her questions, for her lack of understanding.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘There are more apostates than Anders.’

‘A doctor,’ he repeats.

‘Would you prefer them male, or female?’

He has no idea.

‘I know a pair. I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but maybe they are. One is a doctor and the other a mage. A dwarf and a qunari.’ He flinches. ‘Or someone else. I’ll find someone else,’ she soothes.

‘No.’ He shakes his head, pressing his eyes closed against the headache that threatens with the movement. ‘I trust you.’ He opens his eye to see blood on his hands. Aveline is still crouched beside him. Her face is careful and kind. ‘I trust you,’ he repeats.

‘I’ll find where they’re hiding. Do you want me to come with you?’

He thinks about it a moment. ‘Please,’ he says. She is so sure and steady. It is soothing to have her nearby; she’ll watch his back for him, and he can relax.

‘I want to walk you home.’ He doesn’t protest. She lifts him to his feet with an strong hand at his elbow. ‘Can you carry your sword?’ He wants to snort in derision: it’s his sword, but his hands echo with the feel of it getting lost so easily in the fight that he gives it over without a word. ‘You need to eat something.’ He nods; he knows. ‘You should come back to my place.’

‘No,’ he manages.

‘Please. For my peace of mind.’

He cannot argue, so he goes.

 

 

‘Another for dinner,’ Aveline calls the moment the door closes.

‘Dinner?’ Fenris looks startled.

‘We eat late,’ says Aveline. Fenris supposes they must, for the sake of their shifts with the Guard.

‘Hello, Fenris!’ Donnic smiles at him while Aveline puts their weapons in the hallway rack. It’s so strange and homely, a fire warm in the next room and the walls painted a nice yellow. ‘Come on through, I’m just finishing dinner.’

‘Don’t you think we oughtn’t wash up first?’ Aveline inquirers. Donnic’s smile freezes in place a little as he takes in the state of Fenris.

‘Probably. Normally I wouldn’t mind,’ he adds, somehow willing to shoulder the burden of Fenris’ state of disrepair, ‘it’s just that we’ve been using my mother’s tablecloth lately.’

‘It’s fine,’ he says. He feels faint, but refuses to lean on the wall for support.

‘Come on,’ says Donnic. He hustles Fenris into the bathroom. ‘I’ve got to show you how this works,’ he explains. He touches the knobs over the bath. ‘Hot tap, cold tap.’ Fenris looks at him quizzically. ‘Blessing of being in a modern apartment. There’s a boiler downstairs. This time of night usually there’s hot water enough.’ He smiles, cheerful, like Fenris comes over covered in blood all the time and nothing ever made him happier. He's such a good man, and Fenris is overwhelmed. ‘You’ll need clothes, I presume.’ Aveline has already thought of that, crowding in the doorway with a small pile.

‘They’ll all be a bit big for you.’

‘Take your time,’ says Donnic. ‘I’ve still go to do the pudding and the gravy.’ He’d said only a moment before that he was finishing dinner, but the bathroom door closes and Fenris is left alone in the blessed cool silence.

The bath is the same black as his own, the same black as the stones of Kirkwall, but it’s shiny and clean and smooth to touch. The floor is slightly warm under his toes. He strips as the water runs, checking and rechecking to be certain it’s warm. Bizarre. Hot water just running into a house.

He washes as fast as he can, but the water is hot and the silence so calming that he forgets time long enough that he jolts up and out of the water in a horrid start. There is a moment of indecision: his undershirt is bloodied and stinks from his own sweat, but the shirt Aveline has left him is too thin to be considered safe. He tugs on his own shirt, feeling ungenerous, slightly guilty.

They are waiting for him, but dinner isn’t cold as he’d feared.

They don’t ask him anything. He’s afraid that Aveline will twist in her seat and demand an explanation, but neither of them comment. Perhaps - probably - they have already discussed him.

He finds he doesn’t care. The food is good. The food is delicious. He’s not eaten so well in so long. He doesn’t protest when Aveline points him at their couch. Their apartment is very small - no space for one kid, let alone the twelve Isabela threatened - and the couch is the only thing dividing the kitchen from living room.

Usually unable to sleep even with the safety of familiarity he thinks their movements behind him will keep him wide-eyed and tense, but he blinks his eyes shut and doesn’t open them until morning.

The apartment is empty, and there’s a note on the table. It’s not written, it’s a small cartoon, which makes Fenris laugh to see. Donnic is a good man, a good friend, and Fenris has spent too little time with him lately. There is food in the pantry, the note says, so he eats and cleans up after himself, guilty for the way he wouldn’t if he were in the mansion.

He’s nearly to his own home when he runs into Hawke going the other direction with her dog and Sebastian.

‘Fenris! Got anything on today?’ He doesn’t. He has no plans, and he feels bright and alive like he hasn’t felt for so very long. ‘We’re going blood mage hunting. You feel up to it?’

Of course he does, and he falls in between them without a concern in the world.

 

 

He’s nervous but trying not to show it, and she’s uncertain and trying not to show it. A good pair, he thinks, following her through a maze in Lowtown. He’s certain he’s been here before - he’s been everywhere in Kirkwall, with Hawke leading the way - but he hasn’t been here for some time.

Aveline pauses, takes a breath, and looks at him. ‘We’re here,’ she says.

There’s a door made of a red piece of metal. She knocks on it, and it rattles in its setting.

With a cautious groan it opens. ‘You’re the guard,’ says the qunari. Her - his? voice is accented, just barely.

‘Guard-Captain Aveline,’ Aveline confirms. ‘I have someone to see you.’

The door opens a little wider. ‘I didn’t think you were telling the truth.’ The qunari is speaking softly.

‘You’re doing good work here,’ says Aveline. ‘I have no reason to bring you harm.’

‘Come in,’ says the qunari.

There are two rooms on the inside and Aveline is made to wait in the outer while the qunari hustles Fenris into the next one. This one is larger but cosy: a seat, a narrow bed, a bench lined with things and a shelf filled with potions. Still, Fenris is nervous. He hates feeling nervous. He’s wearing his sword and feels as though he shouldn’t be. A place of healing, as Anders would declare, but no Fade-creatures to possess and protect it.

There’s a dwarf here, too, and so the qunari must be the mage if either of them are.

‘I’m Marra, this is my associate Tarlral.’ The dwarf holds out her hand, and then gestures for him to sit once they have shaken. ‘You’re the one the Guard-Captain wanted us to see? Interesting woman. I thought she was going to arrest us.’

‘She wouldn’t,’ says Fenris.

‘The law says she should,’ says Tarlral.

Fenris thinks that Aveline should probably arrest their gang first, starting with Hawke, and a surgeon and her mage-friend pose very little threat in comparison.

‘What can we do for you?’ asks Marra.

He has some of the money he has earned, no idea if it’s too much or not enough, if he should have brought the whole chest or if maybe this sort of thing will take a lot of money over a long time. He has no idea what he’s doing.

‘It’s alright,’ says Marra. ‘Like as not it’s not the strangest thing we’ve been asked. Not in this city.’

‘It might be,’ he mutters. He turns his hands into fists and lets his gauntlets prick blood from his palms. He blinks long, closing his eyes against the steady sunlight streaming into the room through a crack in the roof covered over with glass. ‘I need you to fix me.’ He opens his eyes a crack but the dwarf and the qunari are only sitting patiently waiting for more. ‘My body is wrong.’ He is surprised his voice does not waver over the words. ‘I would like you to fix that.’

‘Born wrong, or broken?’ asks Marra. He wants to cry in relief that he does not have to explain any more than he has.

‘Born,’ he says.

‘I presume we’re not discussing lyrium,’ says the qunari. They are both business-like but gentle, confident without being overbearing.

He shakes his head. ‘Will they be a problem?’ He knows Anders has had some issues healing him when the wounds are too close to the lines.

‘I can work with it,’ says Tarlral. ‘How far do they go?’

‘All over.’

‘Do you mind showing us?’

He’s not been naked in front of anyone since Danarius, and he’s not sure that he can. But he must, eventually, he must, and if these are the last people to see him in this body he can live with that. Better them than Danarius.

He stands and pulls off his armour piece by piece, and then one shirt, and then the other. The air is slightly cold and he shivers. Marra looks him over and nods, once, firmly.

‘Tarlral?’ she asks.

‘The lyrium may pose an issue, but only in healing. How bent are you on lifting a sword in the near future?’

‘How long would I be out?’

‘A month, I think. It really depends.’

‘I can’t change below,’ says Marra. Fenris nods. He is unsurprised, and wouldn’t be asking for this much except that he’d heard a rumour, a faint whisper of a story of someone else who’d had the same. They tell him to get dressed again and he does. Simple, easy. They understand, and they listen.

‘There’s potions you’ll be wanting to take.’

‘To help the surgery?’

‘Some. Your body’s not getting the insides it needs. You’ve done well. Swinging that sword probably helps. You can say no if you like, but people born how you want to be get this naturally.’ Marra is standing and going over to the shelf. ‘I’m not sure we have any ready-made.’

‘We don’t,’ says Tarlral.

‘Alright, I’ll make some up and you can come get it tomorrow.’

‘Two days,’ Tarlral corrects. ‘We have an appointment tonight.’

‘And we can teach you how to make it, so you’re not relying on finding a potion-maker.’ Fenris nods. It’s all happening so fast. He’d walked in without hope and suddenly they are talking as though it’s already been done. Everything’s already been decided. It’s intoxicating and he wants only to laugh, nerves or hysteria or actual joy, he cannot tell.

‘Three days from now,’ says Tarlral. ‘If that suits. We can do the surgery then.’ It’s so soon and not soon enough. He nods, nervous.

‘How much will I owe you?’ They exchange a glance, and Fenris is prompted into adding, ‘I do have the money. I don’t require charity.’

‘Wouldn’t suggest that you do,’ Marra says easily, even though it’s clear she was about to. ‘If I’m being honest it will be fifty sovs for the surgery. Time and potions, you understand.’ Fenris nods. ‘The potions you need are on-going. How much, Tarlral?’

‘Fifty silver a pop, maybe.’

Fenris nods. That’s easy. That’s very easy. He has far more than that, and once he knows how to make them he’s sure he can make them cheaper.

‘There’s another matter. What with this,’ Marra makes a gesture Fenris takes to mean, all of his everything, ‘you’re likely been feeling fairly down?’ He freezes, he absolutely freezes. He didn’t come here to talk about his moods. ‘Not saying you are, but if you are, you might like to try this.’ She cannot reach, so Tarlral has to get up to help her get down a small case of potions. They’re in vials big enough to be shot-glasses, full to the brim. ‘We’re a bit new at this sort of potioning,’ Marra continues. ‘So it might not work, or it might be not enough or too much. But if you’re feeling down maybe try it. It might help bring you back up to happy. No more than one a day, mind, and it might take a few days for any change to really show.’

‘Does all this sound good?’ asks Tarlral.

Marra laughs. ‘We have just sort of thrown you in. If you need longer to make sure this is what you want -’

‘No,’ says Fenris. He shakes his head. He will not wait longer than he must. ‘No, this is. This is fine.’ He looks at the lyrium on his hands. ‘Perfect, actually.’ He can feel himself smiling. He hasn’t smiled like this for so long, not properly, not without Isabela falling on her face or at Sebastian’s sarcastic humour.

‘Midmorning in three days, then,’ says Marra. She stands and insists on shaking his hand again.

‘Do you want money for the potions?’ he asks. Tarlral has put some in a pouch and given them to him.

Marra shakes her head. ‘Test ‘em out. Tell us how you feel.’

Aveline stands when he enters that room, and her worried expression breaks into a grin to see his face.

‘It went well?’

Marra looks at Fenris and nods and smiles. ‘Very well.’

‘Thank you,’ says Fenris. ‘Thank you.’

‘Three days,’ says Tarlral. Fenris nods, and feels like he is floating as he follows Aveline away.

 

 

 

His mansion is quiet. Aveline asked him for lunch but he declined. He thinks he needs to be alone. He’ll see her at the Hanged Man tonight anyway, but for now he needs to be alone.

He cannot believe - never imagined. This. It’s happening.

He wanders the mansion without quite knowing what to do with himself. The mirror in the bathroom is still grimy but this time he pauses to look at himself. His hair covers his face and his armour the rest of him. He isn’t sure what he’s looking at.

Hesitating, he fingers a buckle. For years he’s lived in this mansion and for years he has avoided looking at himself. Wondering if he should feel sad that he’s going to alter himself, he realises that he doesn’t. Doesn’t at all. He's eager and excited and wants nothing more than for the three days to pass. 

He is excited to feel free, to feel as though he can wander without a shirt like Carver used to do, obnoxious and masculine.

He walks into the rooms he uses the most and feels the dirt beneath his toes. His feet have gone black from their walk to the mansion but there is no reason for there to be dirt here. He knows there is a broom somewhere. He knows where the water pump is, where there are cloths he can use to clean.

His life needs to start somewhere. He picks here. 


End file.
